Category: Illustration

Another short comic…for another speedy dealine…

Posted on Posted in Events, IllustrationTagged , , , , , , , 7 Comments

It’s that time of year again when the comic competitions start building as we all start getting excited for the convention season! And with my table for Comiket well and truly booked, I’m certainly no exception. In the name of getting in the graphic mood, I’ve just finished and submitted this years entry for the Jonathan Cape/Observer graphic short story prize. This year’s tale in four pages wanders a little further into romantic territory than I’d usually care to, but I was inevitably going to have to accept the existence my estrogen levels at some point so here we are.

Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 And before anyone asks, yes. Of course I had to stay up all night to finish it. When have I ever, EVER not had to push a project right up to the wire?

I mean, this whole illustration business just wouldn’t be fun if it didn’t result in regular stints of self abusingly painful sleep deprivation now would it?

Interview Number Two! This time at Design Juices

Posted on Posted in Events, IllustrationTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

If you’re not fed up of my wordpress witterings,

And have still yet to tire of my twitterings,

Read more about me in this interview

I did for Design Juices who, just like you,

Seemed interested in me and the work I do.

I’ve tried to be interesting and not to bore you!

Horray for poetry!

No seriously though, the good, kind folk at Design Juices have been working hard, as always to bring you the news from the mouths of folk like me…and this time IS me. It’s my second online interview published in a few weeks (The first can be found here at Broken Frontier)

What’s EVOLVING into quite a nice little Project…ha

Posted on Posted in Events, IllustrationTagged , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I thought I’d mix things up a bit for today’s post, and take a break from little drawings and odds and ends I’ve been doing (and no that’s not because I’ve run out of things to show. I’ve ACTUALLY just started another drawing now okay?  Don’t be such a bloody Doubting marvin.

…

No I don’t know what that is either.)

So instead I thought I’d do a bit of this whole social networking bit I hear so much about, and spread the word about a little project I was invited to do a wee bit of work for.

I was sent a rather neat little script for a short sci-fi film to be made this year. It was intriguing to me as a film, and had an engaging tone, good pace and nice, dark edge to it, but I started to really take notice when the writer  mentioned he’d like to release a short comic book alongside it. Unfortunately it came at a bad time for me, (it was during that very busy, recent period in which I  dropped off of the face of the internet. You know, the past seven months. That time. I like to call it “the mysterious phase.”) so I reluctantly declined the project.

I was then offered the compromise of doing the cover art for it, if I was too busy to commit to the inners, which pretty much seemed like a dream. It’s like being told “hey, you! You know that project you like but don’t have time to get involved in? Okay how about you don’t do any of the really hard graft but still get to work on it? Oh yeah, and it’s like, the first thing people will look at too. You in? Okay cool.”

I was, so in.

So I entered into chats with the film maker and here it is, the cover for the, soon to be released comic for the, soon to be released short Evolutionary: a sci-fi, action short with dark undertones and an ambiguity complex.

evolutionary

I’ve no doubt it’s going to be stunning. For more information and to view it’s progress, check out the Youtube channel here, and read alllabauddit here.

And, incidentally, I’ve since seen some of the work from the inners. They’ve been taken on by a truly incredible artist and most certainly will not disappoint. Seriously, I’m almost glad I didn’t have the time they’re so good.

…

Almost.

Anyway It’s going to be slamming and I can’t wait to see the fruits of everyone’s labour. Keep your eyes peeled for it and start getting excited.

Over and out.

Present Giving, the LazyMan Way!

Posted on Posted in Events, IllustrationTagged , , , , 1 Comment

For those of you who were sharing this little square of the interwebs with me this time last year, you may well recall it was my little sisters Birthday in August.

It’s now August again.

Which means she’s only gone and had another one. Greedy little sod.

Unfortunately I was not in her vicinity for this one, so wasn’t able to put on a show to quite the extent as then (thank Christ. How the eff I was ever going to beat that one in terms of effort, short of performing some kind of machinist-esque sleep and/or life boycott, is well and truly beyond me.) So her gift had to be somewhat smaller and more portable-er than…you know…a whole days worth of baking and decorating.

And so I did my usual trick and defaulted to a drawing!

Rhianna

She’s an ace little toy-maker and pretty nifty with a needle and thread so I guess I wanted this to say “I think you are okay. Love from your sister.” In pictures.

Honestly, I’m starting to worry here. There’s only so many times people can be impressed that I “took the time and effort to craft something personal just for them”, which is sort of the emotional response I rely on to mask the fact that, really, I’m just poor, lazy and hate shopping.

(I should start writing greetings cards.)

Happy Birthday Sis!

Weddings, Woofs and a Whole Lotta Love

Posted on Posted in Events, Illustration, MusingsTagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments

wedding-cardThis weekend two people got married.

Actually, there was probably a lot more people than that getting married, it’s just that I only saw the two. And therefore they were the only two I really care about, certainly enough to mention.

Anyway, this weekend a beautiful friend of mine from school married her childhood sweetheart, and all round very nice chap, in a church and I had the pleasure of throwing paper at them, signing hymns I don’t know the words to, then drinking a lot of wine.

Weddings are fun.

Anyway, in the years between school and here, while they were busy being grown ups and building a stable life together, I’ve been busy jumping from place to place, ignoring useful adult things like owning vehicles and making investments and starting ISAs, instead burying the adult part of my head in the proverbial sand of education until a later date when I’ll be forced to dig it out again.

This is fine. It’s nice actually, on the rare occasions when I and my school friends do all return home, it means we all have a lot to talk about and is a good tool in preserving the strength of our relationships enough to know we will all be invited to each others weddings and other such life milestones.

But for the first time, this wedding presented me with a pressure. I love this girl. She deserves every bit of happiness with her loving chappy and long may it continue in the life they’ve now formed together, and I wanted to give them something that would represent this. Something that could represent my happiness for them and my graciousness in being chosen to share it with them on that day. Unfortunately presents of this magnitude often involve money and, as a student and avoider of life things, this is something I do not posses.

So I did the only thing I know how to do these days, and offered the only thing I have to offer and drew for them an aspect of their lives that I know they love. Their bloody dogs. bennyalphie

I worried for a while that something like this might be a bit self indulgent, after all a wedding should be all about them, not me and what I do. But it’s not that I think they SHOULD own my work, it’s literally that, right now in my life, it’s all I have to give them. And it was born from love for them and made with the best of intentions.

And they really do love those little mutts.

So let us, once again, raise our glasses to Jo and David, preserving friendships and the beauty of sharing the differences within our lives.

And of course, those two little dogs.

Illustrating Science: The joy of pseudo diagrams (fig. 2)

Posted on Posted in Illustration, Musings, TypographyTagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

This is Lucy.

Lucy's feedback

And this is Carl.

Carl's Brain

They like to do things. Things like moving. They’re especially good at intentional moving, unconsciously.

This was Lucy, once.

Lucy's egg legThen I got my hands on her.

And This is Proprioception.

(A project from last Christmas.)

This is Proprioception

propbook5

Inspired by the ingenuity of the pseudo-educational comedy, Look Around You, Proprioception was a mock 70’s educational manual in which I took a real life bit of, really damn interesting, biology and explained it using entirely non scientific methods. Because I am an illustrator, so cutting things up makes more sense to me than the deeply fascinating intricacies of real life biology.

FeedbackThe pseudo diagrams were designed to portray the importance of this fascinatingly vital sixth sense, so inherent in our bodies most people have never even considered a life without it (and in fact there are only 6 known cases of people having a complete lack. This is a really cool video about one man’s battle.)

The “text book” had fold out elements to reveal new tasks that got people thinking about the impact of Proprioception in their own life.

Opening page 1Opening page 2I wanted to draw people’s attention to it’s vitality to our functioning everyday and used tasks and design choices to create a style reminiscent of an 70’s school textbook/instruction manual with a playful, modern twist.

Carl dancingProprioception allows us to understand our own body’s position in relation to itself without consciously considering where each limb is. It’s why when you close your eyes, you know where both your hands are. It’s super neat and super vital and I wanted people to understand that fact using simple collage techniques and fun imagery to demonstrate the incomprehensible struggle that would be living without it.

Plus it gave me an excuse to cut up my friends faces for a few months.

Seriously, I was picking Carls head out of my carpet for weeks.

Illustrating science: The joy of pseudo diagrams (fig 1)

Posted on Posted in Illustration, Musings, TypographyTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Hands up if you want to learn a totally amazing fact?What about something entirely controversial?

Or even just utterly trivial?

And who wants to learn them through the medium of…TYPOGRAPHY!? …no?

Well if you raised your hands to any of them you are a fool, because I can’t see you and that was very clearly a rhetorical request. So you can sit down, behave and have all three.

This was a short uni brief: 3 posters to work as a set and detail three facts that fit the above criteria.

The conception of the carbon that makes up all living things.
The atoms that form most of your body’s cells were created in the explosion of a star.
The lifespan of our cells, built from this carbon.
The maximum number of times your body’s cells can multiply and divide before they deteriorate and die.
The life form that housed the carbon is gone, yet the atoms continue.
In reality, the afterlife is nothing more than the continued existence of atoms after the death of the cell they once formed.

So here they are, three posters about the passage of time and our simple, biological place in it. An amazing beginning to the journey of carbon atoms, a trivial definition of our cells’ lifespan and the true, if not hard to swallow fact that we are nothing more beautiful than a temporary home for ongoing carbon.
Some may see this as a dark concept. I think it’s an utterly beautiful one, although the project itself is not one of my favourites.

Still, either way it’s all pretty interesting

The Spotlight’s all on ME!

Posted on Posted in Events, Illustration, MusingsTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Okay, I promise you NEW work, BUT FIRST check this out!

My first ever online inteview brought to you by them clever fellas over at Broken Frontier!

Big thanks to the guys, especially Andy who saw value in my work enough to wanna know ALL ABOUT IT! And with any luck you do to! So go get an insight into my noodle and why I do the things I do and I promise I’ll reward you with shiny new things soon!